No wonder Lois Lerner took the 5th

Transcripts of the interviews, viewed Wednesday by The Wall Street
Journal, appear to contradict earlier statements by top IRS officials,
who have blamed lower-level workers in Cincinnati.
Elizabeth Hofacre said her office in Cincinnati sought
help from IRS officials in the Washington unit that oversees tax-exempt
organizations after she started getting the tea-party cases in April
2010. Ms. Hofacre said Carter Hull, an IRS lawyer in Washington, closely
oversaw her work and suggested some of the questions asked applicants.

Ms. Hofacre says Lois Lerner made false statements when she blamed the targeting on Cincinnati employees. No wonder Ms. Lerner took the Fifth Amendment and avoided testifying.

She was not fooling anyone by taking the Fifth. If you have to take the Fifth to testify about what you did in your job, you did something wrong.

I am willing to bet that this is the tip of the ice berg.

In fact, at this point, I would not be at all surprised if conservatives who believe that the White House was involved turned out to be right.

There have been so many lies. I am not talking about hiding it. I am talking about since they 'came clean.' It has been one lie after another from the IRS since they came clean.

Thursday, June 6, 2013. Chaos and violence continue, rumbles about
election issues in the KRG, the UN condemns one attack yesterday (yes,
only one), WHO continues to sit on a report about birth defects in
Iraq, the US government spies on the phone calls and internet use,
Eric Holder appears before Congress and refuses to answer whether or not
Congress is being spied upon by the executive branch, and more.

Starting in the US with The War on the First Amendment.
Last month,
The War on the First Amendment's big revelations were, first, that the Justice
Dept had secretly seized the phone records of a 167-year-old news
institution, the Associated Press. Then came the revelation that the Justice Dept targeted Fox News reporter James Rosen. Clark S. Judge (US News and World Reports) observed,
"It has been a bad few weeks for the First Amendment. The
sinister commonality to the Internal Revenue Service and AP
scandals and the James Rosen affair is that each appears to have been
(strike "appears ": each was) an attempt to suppress a core American
right." The distressing news of government assaults on the First
Amendment continue. US Senator Bernie Sander's website explained the
latest revelation:

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone
records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon, one of America's
largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in
April. The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian,
requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA
information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the
United States and between the U.S. and other countries. The document
shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the
communication records of millions of U.S. citizens are being collected
indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected
of any wrongdoing.

(Cedric and Wally noted that summary this morning.) Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) notes Senator Sanders spoke out on the issue today:
“The United States should not be accumulating phone records on tens of
millions of innocent Americans,” Sanders said. “That is not what
democracy is about. That is not what freedom is about. Congress must
address this issue and protect the constitutional rights of the American
people.”Sanders added: “While we must aggressively pursue international
terrorists and all of those who would do us harm, we must do it in a way
that protects the Constitution and the civil liberties which make us
proud to be Americans.”

Writing for the Guardian Glenn Greenwald scooped everyone last night. It was a major scoop and a major accomplishment. At Ann's site yesterday, I noted: "All the other news outlets are following in his wake, Washington Post, CNN, New York Daily News, Reuters, Bloomberg News,
etc. Trained reporters who've made a career out of journalism would
kill for this moment so let's hope Greenwald enjoys it. He's got reason
to be proud of himself. And from a civil liberties point of view, all Americans have a reason to
be scared. The government has truly overstepped its bounds." And there's more. As AP reports today, "Separately, The Washington Post and The Guardian reported Thursday the
existence of another program used by the NSA and FBI that scours the
nation's main Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs,
emails, documents and connection logs to help analysts track a person's
movements and contacts. It was not clear whether the program, called
PRISM, targets known suspects or broadly collects data from other
Americans."

As far as we know this order from the FISA court is the broadest
surveillance order to ever have been issued: it requires no level of
suspicion and applies to all Verizon subscribers anywhere in the U.S. It
also contains a gag order prohibiting Verizon from disclosing
information about the order to anyone other than their counsel.

The Patriot Act’s incredibly broad surveillance provision
purportedly authorizes an order of this sort, though its
constitutionality is in question and several senators have complained
about it. The Patriot Act provision requires the FBI to notify Congress
about the number of such warrants, but this single order covering
millions of people is a deceptive end-run around that disclosure
requirement.

The presumed incoming FBI director, James Comey, will be the one in
charge of and responsible for deciding whether to seek renewals of this
order and any future orders like it, which is interesting in light of
his complicated history with NSA surveillance. It certainly suggests
some questions he should answer in his confirmation hearings.

Dan Roberts and Spencer Ackerman (Guardian) report today:After the revelation by the Guardian of a sweeping secret court order that authorised the FBI to seize all call records from a subsidiary of Verizon, the Obama administration sought to defuse mounting anger over what critics described as the broadest surveillance ruling ever issued.A
White House spokesman said that laws governing such orders "are
something that have been in place for a number of years now" and were
vital for protecting national security. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic
chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee, said the Verizon court
order had been in place for seven years. "People want the homeland kept
safe," Feinstein said. But as the implications of the blanket
approval for obtaining phone data reverberated around Washington and
beyond, anger grew among other politicians. Intelligence committee member Mark Udall, who has previously warned in
broad terms about the scale of government snooping, said: "This sort of
widescale surveillance should concern all of us and is the kind of
government overreach I've said Americans would find shocking." Former
vice-president Al Gore described the "secret blanket surveillance" as
"obscenely outrageous".

Senator Ron Wyden's office issued the following today:

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.),
released this statement following news reports alleging that the U.S.
Government has collected the phone records of millions of Verizon
customers. Wyden is a senior member of the Senate Intelligence
committee. “The program Senators Feinstein and Chambliss
publicly referred to today is one that I have been concerned about for
years. I am barred by Senate rules from commenting on some of the
details at this time. However, I believe that when law-abiding
Americans call their friends, who they call, when they call, and where
they call from is private information. Collecting this data about every
single phone call that every American makes every day would be a
massive invasion of Americans’ privacy. The
administration has an obligation to give a substantive and timely
response to the American people and I hope this story will force a real
debate about the government’s domestic surveillance authorities. The
American people have a right to know whether their government thinks
that the sweeping, dragnet surveillance that has been alleged in this
story is allowed under the law and whether it is actually being
conducted. Furthermore, they have a right to know whether the program
that has been described is actually of value in preventing attacks.
Based on several years of oversight, I believe that its value and
effectiveness remain unclear.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today criticized a secret
domestic surveillance program that swept up millions of telephone
records on calls by Americans who were not suspected of any wrongdoing.A court order demanding the records be turned over was obtained under
a controversial interpretation of a provision in the so-called Patriot
Act, which Sanders voted against when it was first enacted in 2001 and
when it was reauthorized in 2006 and 2011.“As one of the few members of Congress who consistently voted against
the Patriot Act, I expressed concern at the time of passage that it
gave the government far too much power to spy on innocent United State
citizens and provided for very little oversight or disclosure.
Unfortunately, what I said turned out to be exactly true.“The United States should not be accumulating phone records on tens
of millions of innocent Americans. That is not what democracy is about.
That is not what freedom is about. Congress must address this issue and
protect the constitutional rights of the American people,” Sanders
added.“While we must aggressively pursue international terrorists and all
of those who would do us harm, we must do it in a way that protects the
Constitution and the civil liberties which make us proud to be
Americans,” Sanders said.The Obama administration did not dispute a report, first published
yesterday by the Guardian, that a classified court order required
Verizon to turn over massive phone records to the National Security
Agency.

Senator Rand Paul's office issued a statement condemning the spying and calling for a restoration of the Fourth Amendment:

Jun 6, 2013

WASHINGTON, D.C. -
Sen. Rand Paul today announced he will introduce the Fourth Amendment
Restoration Act of 2013, which ensures the Constitutional protections of
the Fourth Amendment are not violated by any government entity.

"The
revelation that the NSA has secretly seized the call records of
millions of Americans, without probable cause, represents an outrageous
abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution. I have long argued that Congress must do more to restrict
the Executive's expansive law enforcement powers to seize private
records of law-abiding Americans that are held by a third-party," Sen.
Paul said. "When the Senate rushed through a last-minute extension of
the FISA Amendments Act late last year, I insisted on a vote on my
amendment (SA 3436)
to require stronger protections on business records and prohibiting the
kind of data-mining this case has revealed. Just last month, I
introduced S.1037, the Fourth Amendment Preservation and Protection Act,
which would provide exactly the kind of protections that, if enacted,
could have prevented these abuses and stopped these increasingly
frequent violations of every American's constitutional rights.

"The
bill restores our Constitutional rights and declares that the Fourth
Amendment shall not be construed to allow any agency of the United
States government to search the phone records of Americans without a
warrant based on probable cause."Click HERE to view the text of this legislation, which will be introduced when the Senate returns to session on Friday, June 7.

###

To address the issues involved in the latest news cycle revelations, Marco Werman (PRI's The World) spoke with journalist James Bamford who noted,
"The difference is in the Bush administration it was illegal. Since
then, they've created this Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments
Act and revamped the PATRIOT Act to some degree so what was illegal a
few years ago is probably now legal in some secret back corner of the
Justice Dept and NSA." At today's Senate Appropriations Committee
hearing, Senator Mark Kirk estimated that this spying would have
involved as many as 120 million phone calls. (A key point Bamford made
to Marco Werman was that raw data can be overwhelming and
counter-productive to spying efforts.) Kirk had one issue -- which was
were members of Congress spied on.Senator Mark Kirk: I want to just ask, could you assure to us that
no phones inside the Capitol were monitored -- of members of Congress.
That would give a future executive branch, if they started pulling this
stuff, kind of a -- would give them unique leverage over the
legislature?Attorney General Eric Holder: Uh, with all due respect, Senator, I
don't think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss, uhm, that
issue. I'd be more than glad to come back in a -- in a appropriate
setting to discuss, uh, the issues that you have raised but I -- in this
open forum, I don't -- I do notSenator Mark Kirk: I would interrupt you and say that the correct
answer would be: "No, we stayed within our lane and I am assuring you
that we did not spy on members of Congress."Committee Chair Barbara Mikulski: You know I'd like to suggest
something here. When I read the New York Times this morning, it was
like, "Oh God, not one more thing." And not one more thing where we're
trying to protect America and it looks like we're spying on America. I
think the full Senate needs to get a briefing on this.

Kirk, Mikulski and Senator Richard Shelby all agreed it was an important
question. And it's important because it's them. It's too bad that
they don't feel it's important for non-members of Congress. It's too
bad that Mikulski's 'answer' is to call for a closed hearing. It's too
damn bad that she doesn't think the American people are owed answers.
Remember, in American now, "democracy" translates as something that
belongs only to elected members of Congress.

Attorney General Eric Holder: While the Department of Justice must
not waiver in its determination to protect our national security, we
must be just as vigilant in our defense of the sacred rights and
freedoms we are equally obligated to protect, including the freedom of
the press. In order to ensure the appropriate balance in these efforts,
at President Obama's direction, I have launched a review of existing
Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve
reporters. Last week, I convened the first in a series of meetings --
with representatives of news organizations, government agencies, and
other groups -- to discuss the need to strike this important balance,
ensure robust First Amendment protections, and foster constructive
dialogue. I appreciate the opportunity to engage members of the media
and national security professionals in this effort to improve our
guidelines, policies and processes -- and to renew the important
conversation, that is as old as our Republic, about how to balance our
security with our dearest civil liberties.
As part of that conversation, let me make several things clear. First,
the Department's goal in investigating leak cases is to identify and
prosecute government officials who jeopardize national security by
violating their oaths, not to target members of the press or discourage
them from carrying out their vital work. Second, the Department has not
prosecuted, and as long as I'm Attorney General, will not prosecute any
reporter for doing his or her job. With these guiding principles in
mind, we are updating our internal guidelines to ensure that in every
case the Department’s actions are clear and consistent with our most
sacred values.

Eric Holder is the Attorney General of the United States and, in that
position, heads the Dept of Justice. His remarks might have more
meaning if (a) he wasn't investigating himself and his own agency (see CBS News' Bob Shcieffer's Face The Nation commentary on this point
), (b) his remarks were not so easily read as 'Let me say we're
targeting American citizens not the press itself so the press can't stop
worrying, we're just targeting Americans!' American citizens who are
not members of the press have First Amendment rights as well -- though
Holder and the DoJ seem unaware of that these days. Government
officials also have First Amendment rights. Lois Lerner's made clear
that they even have Fifth Amendment rights. And they also have an
obligation to inform the public of what's going on. When the government
isn't honest with the people -- who are citizens, not its children --
then officials may step forward as whistleblowers. Whistleblowers have
protections as well even if the Justice Dept chooses not to recognize
that fact. The DoJ targeted journalist James Rosen. Holder
appeared in front of Congress days before that scandal broke and
appeared to give a full portrayal of DoJ's interaction with the press.
And then we learn of the targeting of James Rosen. So his words don't
carry a lot of weight. (C) What a ridiculous statement to make on the
day when everyone's talking about the federal government monitoring the
phone calls of private citizens. No, there is no respect for the First
Amendment on the part of DoJ.

This morning, Holder made the remarks in bold while appearing before the
Senate Appropriations Committee to testify about the DoJ's budget
request for Fiscal Year 2014. Richard Shelby is the Ranking Member of
the Committee and he stated this morning:

Madam Chair, I would be remiss if I did not mention the
controversy that has engulfed the Department and the Attorney General in
recent weeks. These issues have overwhelmed the Department and cast a
shadow of doubt upon the Attorney General. The Attorney General is the chief law enforcement officer
of the Federal Government and as the head of the Department of Justice,
it is his responsibility to ensure that laws are enforced and the
interests of the United States are defended. The controversy that has
embroiled the Department has called into question its ability to fairly
administer the law and justice. Further, the questionable actions of
this Attorney General have tarnished the integrity, impartiality and
efficacy of the position.It is the responsibility of this Committee to provide the
resources necessary to ensure that the Department of Justice can
efficiently and effectively enforce the laws, protect our citizens, and
administer justice. Similarly, it is the responsibility of the
Department to ensure that it carries out its duties; that it is
responsible and responsive to the citizens of the United States; and
that it operates with and tolerates no less than the highest degree of
honesty and integrity. Unfortunately, I believe that until these issues
are resolved and the controversy laid to rest, a hue of distrust will
hover over the Department of Justice. Mr. Attorney General, it is my hope that you will move
swiftly to address these issues -- to put this controversy to rest in a
full and open manner so that the Department can get back to focusing on
the issues central to its mission.

Chuck Todd: But then if you look at certain presidential
characteristics, you sort of see how this trio of controversies in
Washington -- IRS, Benghazi -- have impacted the president. His ability
to handle a crisis -- confidence in this, all down. Strong leadership
qualities -- down. Being honest and straight forward -- public down.
All of these areas not looking good as far as the public is concerned.
And this is the way you can see the public is just not happy with the
way the President is running the country.

Chuck Todd noted, "It is large majorities that say that these scandals
raise doubts about the Obama administration. But what's interesting
here, so we had 58% on Benghazi, 58% on the Justice Dept and the probe
on media leaks and the IRS."

Yesterday on Morning Edition (NPR -- link is audio and text), Linda Wertheimer spoke with the International Crisis Group's Joost Hiltermann about the ongoing crises in Iraq. Excerpt.Joost Hiltermann: Well, the government is still there. Now, on paper, it is a
power-sharing government. In reality, the various groups in Iraq are
indeed in the government. But effectively, it's the prime minister who
rules, and the other parties are essentially opponents to the prime
minister and trying to oust him. And they've tried so on several
occasions through a no-confidence vote in parliament, and they failed. There
have been numerous rumors of plots to oust him. I think none of them
would have any real basis, but whatever. They didn't succeed, either, if
they existed. And the only real way for Maliki's opponents to get rid
of him is going to be the elections next year, the national elections.
And the real question is going to be: Are these going to be free and
fair elections? Meanwhile, there is huge frustration about the
lack of services, you know, the poor governance, the very deep divisions
that exist between Maliki and the people he represents and the Kurds,
and between Maliki and the Shia on the one hand, and then the insurgents
and the political representatives of the Sunni community on the other
hand. And so it is a very unhappy situation, which could continue for
some time, except for the Syria crisis, which is looming.

Iraq is poisoned.
Thirty-five million Iraqis wake up every morning to a living nightmare
of childhood cancers, adult cancers and birth defects. Familial cancers,
cluster cancers and multiple cancers in the same individual have become
frequent in Iraq. Sterility, repeated miscarriages, stillbirths and severe birth
defects - some never described in any medical books - are all around, in
increasing numbers. Trapped in this hellish nightmare, millions of
Iraqis struggle to survive, and they call for help.At long last, public pressure and media attention to this public
health catastrophe prompted a joint study by the World Health
Organization (WHO) and the Iraqi Ministry of Health to determine the
prevalence of birth defects in Iraq. This study began in May-June 2012
and was completed in early October 2012.The WHO website says that this large-scale study was conducted in
Baghdad (Karkh and Rasafa), Diyala, Anbar, Sulaymaniyah, Babel, Basrah,
Mosul and Thi-Qar, with 10,800 households from 18 districts and a sample
size of 600 households per district. The Independent (UK) reported that this study was due to be released in November 2012. But the report has not yet come out.

Alsumaria reports
today that congential malformations and rates of cancer are extremely
high as a result of the uranium munitions the US military used. It's no
longer unusual for a child to be born with two heads or with just one
eye, the report explains, and the health statistics are much worse than
in Japan in the aftermath of the US using the atomic bombs. In Falluja,
children born with deformities account for 14.7% of all births. The
report notes that although Iraq has a population estimated at 31
million, there are only 20,000 medical doctors and just over 100
psychotherapists in the country.

While WHO remains silent, UNAMI had something to say today. Hou Qiang (Xinhua) reports:The top UN envoy in Iraq on Thursday condemned the
killing of at least 14 people in an desert area in the country's western
province of Anbar and called it a " cold-blooded murder," said Martin
Nesirky, spokesperson for UN secretary-general, at a daily briefing.Martin Kobler, the Secretary-General's Special Representative for
Iraq, urged the Iraqi security authorities to take swift and decisive
action to arrest the perpetrators of this crime and to bring them to
justice, the spokesman said.The UN envoy also extended his heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims as well as to the Iraqi police.

Kobler was condemning an attack that took place yesterday. Tuesday, Aswat al-Iraq reported,
"Turkmen Alliance MP Mohammed Mehdi al-Bayati called the religious
authority in Iraq and the United Nations to directly intervene to stop
Turkmen displacement in Touz area for 'known political ends,' following
the Kurdish regions's replacement [of] the Kurdish police forces by
military ones."

Today a governor was elected. NINA reports
Ali Dawaiy Lazim was re-elected to a second term as Governor of Maysan
as voted on by "members of the new Provincial Council." April 20th,
Iraq saw provincial elections take place in 12 of Iraq's 18 provinces.
As Kirk H. Sowell (Foreign Policy) rightly observed,
"Iraq's April 20 provincial elections were like two elections in one
country. They included all provinces outside the Kurdistan region
except Kirkuk, due to a long-standing dispute over election law, and the
predominately Sunni provinces of Anbar and Ninawa, where the cabinet
postponed elections under the pretext of security following a series of
candidate assassinations." The United Nations continues to press for
Kirkuk to vote this year. Anbar and Nineveh were first scheduled for
voting on July 4th but that's now been moved to June 20th. The KRG will hold elections in their three provinces on September 21st. Juwanro Muhammad (Niqash) speaks
with Goran (Change) spokesperson Mohammed Tawfiq Rahim about election
issues for the KRG. Goran is a minor third party in Iraq that has
received funding from, among others, the US Central Intelligence
Agency. Excerpt.

NIQASH: Why is the Change Movement so opposed to this draft of the Iraqi Kurdish Constitution?

Mohammed Tawfiq Rahim: The region's draft
constitution – and the KDP is particularly enthusiastic about it – is
full of holes and it doesn’t satisfy the demands of all of the different
political actors in Iraqi Kurdistan. It gives the region’s president
more powers and marginalizes the parliament. This also makes it
inconsistent with Iraq’s own national Constitution, which has a
parliamentary system rather than a presidential one.

So we want the Constitution reviewed before any public
referendum is held. And we believe that that review should result in
amendments that limit the region’s president’s powers – he should be
elected by the parliament and not directly by the people so that he is
responsible to parliament directly.

NIQASH: Why don’t you think it’s logical to just hold a referendum on the Constitution and let the people decide?

Tawfiq Rahim: We are confident that if a
referendum is held on the Constitution, the Iraqi Kurdish people will
not accept it. When the first draft of the Constitution was passed,
there was no real political opposition. Now there is. And it is
important that all parties approve of the draft so that everyone feels a
sense of ownership of the Constitution. It must then also be acceptable
to more than 85 percent of the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. But there’s
no doubt that if a referendum was held now, on the current draft of the
Constitution, that we would urge people not to vote for it.

NIQASH: Recently the KDP and the PUK tried to
nominate Iraq’s current President, Massoud Barzani, for a third term.
But your party was against this step.

Tawfiq Rahim:According to Iraqi
Kurdistan’s laws on the presidency and also according to the draft
Constitution, the region’s president may only nominate themselves for
two terms. According to that, Barzani doesn’t have the right to another
term.

NIQASH: So you’re against Barzani re-nominating himself. Do you have any alternate candidates in mind?

Tawfiq Rahim: We believe that the main
reason the KDP is so keen on getting the Constitution passed is to give
Barzani the right to nominate himself for a third term in office. If
that happens we will try to find someone who could compete against
Barzani for the president’s post. But no decision has yet been taken in
this regard. And we don’t know if we would nominate our own candidate
from within the Change Movement or whether we would cooperate with other
opposition parties to come up with a suitable candidate.

NIQASH: Barzani also recently announced that Iraqi
Kurdistan’s next elections would be held in September this year. How do
you think all of these unresolved issues are going to play out, if
everyone goes to the polls?

Tawfiq Rahim: We hope that the elections
will be held on time and that they won’t be postponed because of any
unresolved issues. We’re very optimistic that votes for the opposition
will increase in Iraqi Kurdistan – especially if new measures are
introduced to reduce voter fraud.

On 23 May, Barzani announced that he would call for the referendum and
accused the opposition of turning the issue into a political war. “If
it’s a bad constitution, people are free not to approve it,” he declared
to a huge, cheering crowd in Erbil, the Kurdistan provincial capital.
Opposition groups, however, were swift to blast Barzani’s suggestion.
The rising Change Movement, or Goran, and several Islamist parties
demanded that the constitution be sent back to parliament for amendment
before any referendum was held. Barzani’s long-term political ally, the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani, also did not agree with the call for the referendum.
The Kurds have been enmeshed in internal wrangling over the elections
after Barzani announced plans last month for balloting in provincial,
parliamentary and presidential races in September.
The dispute centres around the right of Barzani himself to stand for
election for a third term in office, despite the Kurdistan region’s
draft constitution which stipulates in article 64 that the president of
the Kurdistan region “may be re-elected for a second term as of the date
this constitution enters into force”.
Barzani has not declared his candidacy, but his supporters argue that
term limits are not retrospective, so Barzani, initially appointed by
the Kurdish parliament in 2005, and re-elected by in a public vote four
years later, is eligible for re-election. Barzani will complete his two
terms in July.

US tax dollars continue to flow into Iraq. Mark Thompson (Time magazine) reports
today on the $2 billion contract that the State Dept has with PAE
Government Services, Inc., "That’s a million dollars a day over a
five-year period, if the contract hits its ceiling. The down payment is
$347,883,498 (don’t you just love such precision? It’s almost a prime number, for Pete’s sake)." On the topic of money and motive, Kerry-anne Mendoza (New Interventionist) observes:The war has also been of great financial cost to the US and British
taxpayer. A recent Harvard Study found that Iraq and Afghanistan have
added $2 trillion to the US national debt, 20 per cent of the debt incurred between 2001 and 2012. So if not the ordinary people of Iraq, Britain or the US – who exactly did profit from the invasion of Iraq? Big business.Corporations received $138 billion
(10 per cent of US GDP) of US taxpayer money for government contracts
in Iraq. Ten companies took 52 per cent of this sum. Included in their
number was Halliburton, a company linked to both the then US Vice
President Dick Cheney andthe President George W Bush. Halliburton
received $39.5 billionn of contracts in Iraq, without needing to compete
against bids from other firms.Be it Pol Pot, Augusto Pinochet, Saddam Hussein, or even The Taliban – the US and UK governments have supported countless undemocratic organizations to take over nations, so long as they sign contracts which profit our companies and support our foreign policy agenda. To acknowledge that ‘we’ are not the good guys is not easy, and it
does require searching for alternative ways of intervening where we feel
compelled to act.

Power has recently admitted, perhaps a little
ruefully, that “the Kosovo war helped build support for the invasion of
Iraq by contributing to the false impression that the US military was
invincible.” But no intellectual has worked harder than Samantha Power
to propagate this impression.A Problem From Hell won a Pulitzer in early 2003. America’s book
reviewers, eager to be team players, were relieved to be reminded of the
upbeat side of military force during the build-up to Operation Iraqi
Freedom. Surely Saddam Hussein, who had perpetrated acts of genocide
against the Kurds, needed to be smashed by military force. Didn’t we owe
it to the Iraqis to invade? Hasn’t America played spectator for too
long? Power, to her credit, did not support the war, but she has been
mighty careful not to raise her voice against it. After all, is speaking
out at an antiwar demonstration or joining a peace group like Code Pink
really “constructive”? It is certainly no way to get a seat on the
National Security Council.The failed marriage of warfare and humanitarian work is also the
subject of Power’s most recent book, Chasing the Flame, a biography of
Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN humanitarian worker who was killed, with
21 others, by a suicide bomber in Baghdad just months after the U.S.
invasion. Most of the book is a sensitive and rather gripping account of
Vieira’s partial successes and heroic efforts in refugee resettlement
in Thailand, Lebanon, and the Balkans. He eventually rose to become the
UN’s high commissioner on human rights—a position he left when asked by
George W. Bush to lead a UN “presence” in Iraq. That the UN’s top
human-rights official would rush to help with the clean-up after an
American invasion that contravened international law may strike some
observers as strange. (One can imagine the puzzlement and outrage if the
UN’s high commissioner on human rights had trailed the Soviets into
Afghanistan in 1979 to help build civil society.) But for Vieira, and
for Samantha Power, there is nothing unseemly about human-rights
professionals serving as adjuncts to a conquering army, especially when
the prestige of the UN—scorned and flouted during the run-up to the
war—is on the line. Besides, Vieira had the personal assurances of the
U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer—a simply charming American: he even
speaks a foreign language—that the UN taskforce would have a great deal
of sway in how a new Iraq was built.In June 2003, Vieira arrived in Baghdad and was surprised to find
himself completely powerless. That Vieira and company believed the UN
insignia would be more than a hood ornament on Blackwater’s Humvees
bespeaks not tough-minded idealism but wishful thinking. Power herself
claims that Kofi Annan’s main reason for sending Vieira off to Baghdad
was to remind the world of the UN’s “relevance” by getting a piece of
the action. But for him and his colleagues, this confusion of means and
ends proved deadly, one of tens of thousands of blood-soaked tragedies
that this war has wrought. The clear lesson is that humanitarian work is
always fatally compromised if it’s part of a militarized pacification
campaign: NGO workers wield no real power and serve mostly as window
dressing for the conquering army.But this isn’t the moral that Power draws. She is still looking for
Mr. Good War. Today, her preferred human-rights adventure is an
escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

Sammy Power is considered a 'lock' on that position. That has to do
with a lot of people on the left who think speaking into microphones
makes them smart. Oh, remember Devey D full of bluster -- and
everything else -- taking to the KPFA airwaves to lament poor little
"Samantha Powers" (no, he couldn't even get her name right and this was
in the summer of 2008) was pushed aside by the Barack campaign!

No, she wasn't. Nor was she pushed aside for her 'monster' remark. But
idiots like Davey D really did a great job with the distraction.

Samantha Power stepped down, she was not fired, her resignation was not
requested. She stepped down because "monster" wasn't the problem, Iraq
was.

Stephen
Sackur: You said that he'll revisit it [the decision to pull troops]
when he goes to the White House. So what the American public thinks is a
commitment to get combat forces out within sixteen months, isn't a
commitment is it?

Samantha
Power: You can't make a commitment in whatever month we're in now, in
March of 2008 about what circumstances are going to be like in January
2009. We can'te ven tell what Bush is up to in terms of troops pauses
and so forth. He will of course not rely upon some plan that he's
crafted as a presidential candidate or as a US Senator.

We covered it in real time. Hours before that interview started airing,
Power was in trouble with the press for it. It had leaked out and she
suddenly realized the damage. She decided to resign. From the March 7, 2008 snapshot:

Power
was not a campaigner, she was a high level, longterm foreign policy
advisor being groomed to be the next Secretary of State. As Krissah Williams (Washington Post) notes,
Senator Clinton's response to Power's BBC interview was to note Power's
agreement that Obama's pledge to have "combat" troops out in 16 months
was never more than a "best-case scenario". Hillary Clinton: "Senator
Obama has made his speech opposing Iraq in 2002 and the war in Iraq the
core of his campaign, which makes these comments especially troubling.
While Senator Obama campaigns on his [pledge] to end the war, his top
advisers tell people abroad that he will not rely on his own plan should
he become president. This is the latest example of promising the
American people one thing on the campaign trail and telling people in
other countries another. You saw this with NAFTA as well."

We covered it in real time. The same can't be said of Panhandle Media -- the US' alleged "alternative" media? Silence. March 9, 2008, we editorialized on this at Third Estate Sunday Review in "Editorial: The Whores of Indymedia." And we returned to the topic in July, after Tom Hayden 'suddenly' noticed Samantha Power's March BBC interview, "Letters to An Old Sell Out: Iraq." And you can check Third's editorial ("Letters to An Old Sell Out: Iraq")
to find examples of the Real Media outlets that covered it while all the beggars of Panhandle Media played dumb -- it's
playing right? No one can really be that dumb, can they? What is known
is that the watch doggies didn't bark in March 2009. Not Tom-Tom, not
Jeremy Scahill, not the forever climbing on the soap box Naomi
Klein, not Laura Flanders, not The Nation, not Amy Goodman, not
Matthew Rothschild, not one damn radio show on KPFA, WBAI, KPFK, go
down the list. (David Corn did cover it in real time for Mother Jones
-- in order to insist it wasn't important. That everyone knew --
everyone, he insisted -- that Barack didn't mean any promise he made on
the campaign trail.)

That's why she left. She's a known liar and now she's be the US
Ambassador to the UN. Known liar appears to be seen as an asset in the
Obama administration, hence the nomination of Victoria Nuland to be
Assistant Secretary of State for Europe. Nuland, wife of neocon and
Iraq War architect Robert Kagan, got exposed for altering talking points
on Benghazi. The press has thus far noted that she eliminated
terrorist threats from the warnings. They've failed to note that her
e-mails published reveal that she was in communication with others --
including not just her superiors in the State Dept but also going over
the heads of the various people that were crafting the talking points.
Josh Rogin (Daily Beast) notes her nomination may encounter some bumps:

Sen. Richard Burr (R–North
Carolina) told The Daily Beast in an interview Tuesday he doesn’t think
the Nuland nomination should move forward at all until Republican
concerns are fully addressed.

“I
don’t think Victoria Nuland should even have a confirmation hearing
until we have a full understanding of what happened in Benghazi as it
relates to her participation in the talking points, who instructed her
to do that, who were the folks she referenced to in her office that
would be unhappy. I think all of that has to be vetted before any
consideration is given to that nomination,” said Burr.

He even threatened to put a hold on her nomination if his questions aren’t answered to his satisfaction.

“I wouldn’t let her go without a full understanding of her participation,” Burr said.

Sen.
John Barrasso (R–Wyoming) told The Daily Beast Tuesday that he also has
several concerns about the Nuland nomination related to Benghazi. “Her
role in this has been a concern and this will come up as part of her
confirmation process,” he said.

Victoria Nuland's support from Republicans will most likely split along
the lines of: traditional Republicans opposing her and neocons favoring
her.

Returning to today's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.

Senator Susan Collins: Mr. Attorney General, it troubles me that the
President has virtually unreviewable, unfettered authority to order the
killing of any American citizen overseas who is suspected of terrorist
activity -- without any kind of charge or trial or judicial review.
We've all read this morning of the controversy over the NSA having
access to phone records of American citizens. It seems to me that an
American currently receives a greater degree of due process from the
judicial branch if the government is seeking to listen in on his phone
conversations or get information about his phone conversations than if
the President is seeking to take his life. That just doesn't make sense
to me. Why hasn't the administration proposed to Congress a process
that would require some degree of independent judicial review for a
targeted lethal strike against a US person overseas -- something, either
an expansion of the FISA court or a different kind of classified
proceeding before a court to ensure that there's some kind of judicial
review rather than vesting that authority to take a life -- an American
life, I'm talking about, overseas -- only in the President. Attorney General Eric Holder: Well -- it -- With all due respect,
I-I would say that, uhm, it's incorrect to say that it's only in the,
uhm, -- it's in the un- the President has unlimited authority in this
regard -- with regard to the use of drones. And we're talking about
being more transparent.

Brandon Bryant says he was sitting in a chair at a Nevada Air Force base
operating the camera when his team fired two missiles from their drone
at three men walking down a road halfway around the world in
Afghanistan. The missiles hit all three targets, and Bryant says he
could see the aftermath on his computer screen – including thermal
images of a growing puddle of hot blood."The guy that was running forward, he’s missing his right leg," he
recalled. "And I watch this guy bleed out and, I mean, the blood is
hot." As the man died his body grew cold, said Bryant, and his thermal
image changed until he became the same color as the ground."I can see every little pixel," said Bryant, who has been diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder, "if I just close my eyes."Bryant, now 27, served as a drone sensor operator from 2006 to 2011, at
bases in Nevada, New Mexico and in Iraq, guiding unmanned drones over
Iraq and Afghanistan. Though he didn't fire missiles himself he took
part in missions that he was told led to the deaths of an estimated
1,626 individuals.